by Meg Gardiner
Jo agreed. Skunk was both a coward and a predator, and had wanted to hive her off from the able-bodied man who had accompanied her.
"You think he was here ahead of time, watching you?" she said.
"Obviously. He took his time. He maneuvered us right where he wanted us to be. I'm parked over here."
He stuck the cigarette between his lips and hiked the camera under his arm. They threaded their way between fire trucks to the back of the news van. Jo hung back to avoid the smoke, though she had given up being repulsed by cigarettes. Every male relative in her family over forty was a dedicated smoker, so she'd trained herself to deal with it. Her doctor friends—indeed most of San Francisco—would have regarded her tolerance as shocking. It was Halloween, and tonight the city was going to explode with vampires, werewolves, and drag queens, an extravagantly disrobed and preening crew that would cover the streets with good-natured decadence. But the rainbow tribe of the city would shake a finger, maybe organize a protest march, if people lit up a Winston in their midst.
"Susan was a serious reporter. Needy and obsessive, loved to see herself on camera, but she got the story. And she had a heart," the cameraman said.
He pulled open the back doors of the van. Jo was hit with a new smell. It was coming from inside the van. The cameraman didn't react.
"I smell gasoline," she said.
"Where?"
And she realized that he couldn't smell it. He probably couldn't smell anything—he was a smoker.
She backed up, waving him to follow. "Get away from there."
But it was too late. She heard a whooshing sound. A bright flare of orange light erupted from the back of the van.
The paramedics shut the doors of the ambulance. The cameraman was no longer screaming. Morphine had temporarily taken away the pain. But it couldn't undo his burns. They drove off, lights and siren wailing. Amy Tang leaned on the hood of Officer Cruz's patrol car and watched them go.
"Is he going to make it?" she said.
"Screaming's a better sign than feeling no pain. It means the fire didn't burn so deep that it destroyed his nerve endings. Maybe it's second degree rather than third."
The ambulance jostled its way down the street. Jo's limbs felt like they weighed half a ton each.
"It was a setup, wasn't it?" Tang said.
"Undeniably." Her voice was shaky.
"You're lucky, Beckett. Very lucky."
"I know." She glanced at the van. Its interior was a scorched shell. "Pray got burned, figuratively, by the Dirty Secrets Club. Now he's burning them, literally."
Tang was grim. "These guys, they're much more crafty than we gave them credit for."
"How did he set up the bomb?"
"It was low-tech and efficient. When Zapata and the cameraman went into the hotel, he jimmied the lock on the van. Inside he cracked open the cover over the dome light, unscrewed the light-bulb, and stuck an electrical wire in the socket. Stuck the other end of the wire in the gasoline bottle. Tied a string to the bottle and rigged it to fall over and shatter when somebody opened the back door. So the cameraman opens the door, the dome light goes on, the wire goes hot and ignites the gasoline . . . the bottle breaks and it's a portable inferno."
She looked as angry as a raw scrape. "He was covering all the bases. If he didn't get Zapata in the hotel, then when they got back in the truck—boom."
Jo frowned at the news van. This was not fitting together in her own head as neatly as it did in Tang's. "Why take the chance?" "Of?"
"Being seen messing around with a television truck? It's an attention magnet. Half the people who see it are going to hang around hoping to get on camera."
Tang's tough-elf face grew grimmer.
"It's got everybody's attention now. That makes me leery," Jo said. The wind whistled between the buildings. "This isn't over."
"No, it's not. They're slick, and ruthless, and nothing's going to stop them except us."
Jo looked at her, and felt an overwhelming sense of dread.
A block above the Marriott, parked in the Cadillac on Mason Street, Skunk watched the action downhill through his binoculars.
Just as he'd planned. The young Mexican uniform was here. The little dyke plainclothes who always wore black. Too bad they hadn't been closer when the device ignited. Toasty marshmallow cops. What a treat.
Skunk laughed. He was funny when he wanted to be.
And talking to them was the Spider. Hair writhing in the wind, all those black curls, like a web of silk flying around her head. Like a web of thoughts, all circling around one idea. Get Skunk.
What did you call a female spider? A bitch?
He checked the time. Close enough. He sent a text message to Pray.
Perry read the message.
Done. 2 crispy critters.
His entire body felt calm. Crispy? Justice was harsh sometimes. He sent a reply immediately.
Keep checking on Meyer.
Skunk wrote Why?
Stupid man. Skunk didn't need to understand why. Skunk just had to follow orders. We can't let police question her. She's ours—got it?
Got it.
Skunk wrote Spider in sight.
Perry replied. Hang back and observe. Will be on cocounsel's number after noon. May have Spider's ID by then.
Good. Skunk was sick of the Spider coming after him. She knew who had ordered the attack on Perry. All he had to do now was make her tell him.
But down the hill, the little dyke cop stepped out into the street with the Mexican uniform. She was pointing at buildings. The bank on the corner, for starters. She was telling him to get the CCTV camera footage. Fuck.
She turned and looked up Mason Street in his direction, telling the uniform to search the street.
Skunk ducked, laying himself flat on the bench seat.
After a minute he sat up. The cops were gone.
Shit. So was the Spider.
He looked around. The street was emptying out, cops and fire trucks pulling away. Perry kept texting.
Keep eye on Spider. She might have more than the names. Might know where they are. Might lead us to them.
Too many mights, Skunk thought. And she might come after me.
Will decide how bad to do her. I will tell you soon. Pray.
He signed off. Skunk started the engine and pulled out, driving down the hill to look for her.
27
Jo dropped her satchel on the hardwood floor in the hallway and
headed to the kitchen. She got a pot of coffee brewing, opened the patio doors, turned on the TV to catch the news, saw flames, heard screaming, and turned it off, paced the kitchen, stalked into the living room, and stood at the bay window, staring across the street at the Monterey pines in the park. They were dark green against a polished blue sky.
Why had Pray been twisting people into committing suicide, rather than murdering them?
For sport? Perhaps he was so warped that tit-for-tat revenge didn't sate him. Perhaps he couldn't be satisfied with merely torturing people the way they had tortured him. Maybe he wanted the sick satisfaction of getting them to do it to themselves. And he'd found the leverage to get them to end their own lives—a group of people with secrets they couldn't stand to see exposed. The DSC was deciding to destroy themselves rather than have their deeds become known.
She jammed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Outside, the street was quiet. Down at the corner a cable car clattered past. The gripman rang the bell, a jazz riff in clanging brass.
Uncertainty gnawed at her. Pray's actions didn't make sense psychologically.
The burning, she could understand, in a horrible way. That was all about Pray. He was projecting his own sense of psychic immolation onto his tormentors, in the most literal way. That was need, rage, narcissism.
But his tactics didn't make sense. Why did he send Skunk to do his dirty work?
Maybe it worked strategically—keeping himself in the background, sending a confederate to threaten people.
Perhaps he was protecting himself from exposure and arrest.
But he'd been tortured.
Revenge is a very personal act. And men tend to be direct about it. They want to wreak it by their own hand and to witness it unfold. However, it isn't the torturers, but the tortured who feel shame. Was Pray's shame keeping him in hiding?
Until today he'd been inciting suicides, instigated by a creepy minion. It seemed too cagey, too cool. Too removed.
She was missing something.
She needed to go back to the start. To Callie Harding, who had created the Dirty Secrets Club. Everything else flowed from that.
Glass shattered in the kitchen. She spun around.
Across the living room, through the kitchen door, she saw the coffeepot lying broken on the floor. Coffee was running black across the stone, steam rising around shining crumbs of glass. A shadow slid across the floor and retreated out of sight.
Oh, hell.
She backed toward the bay window. Bumped against the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. Keeping her eyes on the kitchen, she unlatched the lock on the window. She had to get out, fast, and even as her hand fumbled with the latch, her anger began outrunning her fear. How dare they? This was her house.
The latch was stuck. Paint had dried into the spaces between the wood and the sash. Crap.
If she broke the window with her elbow, she'd waste time knocking the glass out of the frame before she could climb out. Goddammit. Her cell phone was in her satchel, in the front hall, twenty feet away. The only downstairs landline was in the kitchen.
She couldn't see any other movement or shadows in the kitchen, but now she heard a weird chuffing sound. It set her teeth on edge.
She had to go out the window on the north side of the living room, near the kitchen door. Fifteen feet away. This gorgeous little house suddenly felt like a stadium.
She had to get out. And she wasn't going alone.
Quietly she opened the steamer trunk. She took out her grandmother Kyoko's legacy to her, one of the Japanese museum-quality pieces. The Tokugawa samurai sword.
It was heavy, sharp, and perfectly balanced. It was four hundred years old and hadn't sliced anything tougher than a piece of paper since wooden ships sailed the Pacific. Slowly, quietly, she gripped the hilt and slid it from the lacquered black scabbard. The metal sang quietly, like the hum of a deadly angel.
She gripped it in both hands, held it vertically, and took a step toward the kitchen. The last time she'd held it this tight, Daniel's hand was on the hilt with hers. The last thing this sword had cut was the cake at their wedding.
That chuffing sound came again. The hairs on the nape of her neck jumped up. She took another step. The window was twelve feet away. She stared through the kitchen door.
With a screech, Mr. Peebles sprang off the kitchen counter and skittered through the doorway toward her.
"Shit. Jesus."
She shrieked it loud enough to peel paint off the walls. At the sound, the monkey jerked to a stop on the floor and gaped at her. It dropped the grape it was holding. Its eyes went round as quarters.
"Stupid freaking little—"
"Eeeeeiiieee!"
She lunged for him. Still squealing, Mr. Peebles broke for the stairs. He scampered up, keening like a maniac. Jo pounded after him.
"Come here. Stop it. Oh no, you don't—"
She grabbed for him. He squirted out of reach. He hit the top of the stairs, jinked like a pro halfback, and disappeared into her bedroom. She sprinted after him, the sword clanging against the wall.
"This isn't just for show. It'll turn you into pate."
Rounding the corner into her room, she saw him springboard onto her bed. She dived at him. "Hold still. Idiot hairball—"
He catapulted off the comforter and pelted into the bathroom.
"Ha—small brain loses!"
She ran in after him and slammed the door behind her. Turning slowly, she saw him in the shower, perched atop the shower caddy. He was balled like a shot put, eyes blank and frenetic. She held the sword low and approached him.
Jo spun the wheel, pulled a U-turn across traffic on Geary Boulevard, and screeched into the parking slot outside Compurama. She parked the truck crooked and didn't care.
She got out, stalked around to the passenger side, and pulled out Mr. Peebles. The door to the computer store was open. She shouted, "Ferd."
The monkey couldn't fight her, but she held him with his face turned away from her, just in case. She stormed toward the door.
Everybody who worked there was lined up inside the plate-glass window, gaping at her.
She walked in. "What?"
They continued staring, but shook their heads.
"Good. Get Bismuth," she said.
A young man with meerkat eyes backed away, turned, and scurried toward the stockroom. "Ferd, get out here, and I mean now."
Mr. Peebles was swaddled in a red bath towel. The towel was bound tighter than a tourniquet and wrapped in duct tape. Fitfully, wildly, completely wrapped in duct tape. The only part of him that was visible was his eyes.
One Compurama employee peered at him intensely. "You should really check your basement for pods before they get to this stage."
Jo gave him a death stare. He blinked and retreated behind the counter.
Another young man cleared his throat and pointed vaguely in her direction. "Did you know you have duct tape in your hair?"
"What about it?"
He withdrew his hand quickly. "Nothing. It looks good."
Ferd rushed out of the stockroom. "Jo. Oh, Lord." His hand went to his forehead. "Mr. Peebles, oh my, what happened?"
Jo held her arms out straight, as though ready to dropkick the monkey. Ferd hurried, staring. At her.
She grit her teeth. "It's shampoo. Almost an entire bottle. He's incredibly dextrous."
"It's so foamy."
"He turned on the shower with his feet."
Ferd blinked, wrinkled his nose as though he was about to sneeze, and pressed his fingertips to his cheeks.
"Ferd, no. Your sinuses can't seize. I forbid it. It's physically impossible and if you try it, I'll unwrap the duct tape and set Mr. Peebles loose on the new PCs." She shoved the bundle at him. "For godsake, take him."
Ferd took the monkey. "I thought he was secure in my house."
"Wrong."
He looked Mr. Peebles in his shiny black eyes. "Boy, we have to have a talk."
Jo turned to go. Hearing whispers, she turned back.
"Yes?"
Meerkat Eyes blinked and swallowed. "I just—we wondered . . . are you coming to the Halloween party?"
She stepped toward him. "My costume tonight will not include a wet T-shirt. And it won't include one in your dreams. Any of your dreams, ever. Do you understand?" she said. "Because if it does, the next thing to appear in your dreams will be me, wielding a gigantic pair of garden shears. So even as I speak, you are wiping the memory of this moment from your minds."
She stared at them one by one until they shrank back, nodding. She turned to her neighbor. "Ferd, your monkey is about to give me a personality disorder. Please restrain him."
She was halfway home before she managed to get the bar of soap out of her bra.
She unlocked the door with hands sticky from shampoo. She tossed her keys on the table in the hall. She craved a shower. She headed straight upstairs, peeling off her sodden T-shirt on the way, squeezing out of her wet jeans and turning on the water as hot as it would go.
It was only when she came back downstairs, in a fresh white sleeveless tee and brown combats, that she saw the mail on the floor. It had come through the slot and scattered along the baseboard.
She picked up a small white envelope and saw her name handwritten on the front. Dr. Jo Beckett, UCSF Medical Center. Nothing else. Underneath was the typed label showing it had been forwarded by the Psych Department.
She slit it open with a fingernail and removed a single "sheet of paper. The mess
age was short. She stared at it, and all the blood seemed to drain from her limbs.
She saw the ink on the page. The letters looked as sharp as needles. She heard a humming in her head, white noise that swelled to a drone.
She threw open the front door and stormed down the steps. Where was he? She looked up and down the street. Where was the bastard who'd jammed the letter through her mail slot?
A jogger ran by in sweats and a watch cap, giving her a puzzled look. It was forty-eight degrees out and she was standing there in a thin T-shirt, barefoot. She felt stupid, knew the letter had been forwarded, nobody was hiding out here mocking her. Her eyes were stinging. Her face felt as hot as an iron.
Bastard. Bastard. She repeated it in her mind like a slap, over and over, and choked down the feeling that she was the one being slapped across the face. The words on the page spit at her.
You killed your husband. Welcome to the Dirty Secrets Club.
Jo stood on the sidewalk. She felt like she'd been stun gunned. At
the corner, a cable car clamored down the hill. The metallic ring of its wheels against the tracks sounded to her like an aircraft engine spinning higher and ever higher, before the metal screams and tears itself apart. She crushed the letter in her fist.
She ran back inside and slammed the door. She smoothed out the letter and stared at the message as if possessed by it. She couldn't look away, even when tears obscured the words.
What kind of joke was this? Who had sent it?
"Sons of bitches."
How did they know about Daniel's death?
She stalked into the kitchen and grabbed the phone. Her hand was shaking. Barely able to see, she stabbed the number. Amy Tang's cell phone clicked to voice mail. She hung up, wiped away tears, and called the police station. Tang was out.
"Have her call Jo Beckett. It's urgent."
She hung up. She squeezed the phone in her hand, wound up, and flung it across the kitchen like a fastball pitch. It hit the stove and sprang into pieces.
Who the hell had been talking about Daniel's death? Who had given some sick son of a bitch an emotional knife that would cut through her heart like this? She stood in the kitchen, wanting to scream, feeling the swell of memory like a rising wave, about to break and hit her full force.